JOHNNY DOWD BRINGS “FAMILY PICNIC” TO EUROPE IN APRIL

Thirty years on from his remarkable, indescribably dark and damn right startling Americana debut Wrong Side Of Memphis, Ithaca, NY, legend Johnny Dowd returns to the roots rock arena with Family Picnic, his new album set for release on March 1st through Mother Jinx Records.

Over the last thirty years, Dowd has been releasing records that defy trends, a unique catalogue of work that stands head and shoulders above many of his lauded contemporaries. Now in his seventieth year on God’s good earth, Dowd has lost none of the vigour, enthusiasm, and attitude that has seen him forge his position as one of America’s most inquisitive musical minds, a musical explorer who has charted expeditions to genre-defying destinations that, at their heart, question, challenge, and dissect in their own way notions of the American Dream. Family Picnic — once again featuring long-time cohorts Michael Edmondson and Kim Sherwood -Caso – is the first time Dowd has really looked backwards in all that time, instead of plunging forward into a sonic unknown with the playfulness of a child.

As Dowd says himself: “I had to dig pretty deep for this one. Not sure how many more tunes I have in me. Tick tock. This record took an unexpected turn to the past — my past. It’s kind of like Wrong Side of Memphis 30 years down the road. Surprisingly little has changed for me (emotionally, that is). I’m still drawn to the same themes — unrequited love, murder, general foolishness. Waltzes and shuffles and boom chuck beats abound. Ice cream chord changes. Plus Kim Sherwood -Caso – and Mike Edmondson. What’s not to like? An Americana classic, if I do say so myself.”

Johnny Dowd debuted about thirty years ago with a dark Americana album, Wrong Side or Memphis, and with Family Picnic he returns to that roots rock environment. The lyrics still have that black humor, just listen to the portrait of a family in the title song of this album, that would not make you happy, if he did not put it so funny. And that is actually why I have a weakness for this American singer / songwriter – he is funny and works on my laughter muscles, also with a song like Let’s Have a Party , where I really laugh irresistibly, how clunky those drums also may sound, or maybe that’s why. He opens with a very nice instrumental, Hoodoo, which immediately puts you in the mood for good murder ballads and songs about other misery.

Johnny Dowd is now seventy and is accompanied by two musicians he worked with more often, Michael Edmondson and Kim Sherwood-Caso, and that works perfectly. A perfect Americana album. Do not miss the tour that brings Dowd to Europe in early 2019.

Execute American Folklore

Guy Peters – Photos: Cat Dalton – September 28, 2016

Songs In The Key Of D, Vol.12. Our favorite outsider is back with his latest steps that the chosen course of That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse verderzet (by far the best album title of 2015).The lover knows what to do.

Next year Dowds solo career will reach the symbolic milestone of twenty years.Quite remarkable for the veteran, who was already considered his debut as an old dick, does an impressive productivity after and remains a regular American and European stages skimming his increasingly idiosyncratic becoming music. Wrong Side Of Memphis and his latest feat lie with a first listening may be far apart, but really is nothing further from the truth.The albums are witnessing the same radical vision and attacking roots genres and areas beyond.

For Execute American Folklore Dowd launched a crowdfunding campaign, which was successfully completed.You also know that you will be treated to a feast of nonsense and transgression of kitsch funk and blues rotten remnants of upside regular platitudes, innuendo and irony-free personal documents.He had just as much to be able to walk in a grass green trainingpak and a fluorescent-colored sweatband.The Dowd will all care less.He sets the rules in a colorful world that does not compromise, although sometimes, even now, admit that the man regularly what earwigs shakes up their sleeves.

Fourteen songs he hunts again through in less than forty minutes.Stylistically, this is a continuation of That’s Your Wife … which means he just recorded everything himself: bass, guitar, keyboards and many plastics beats.In opener “unease And Deviance”, actually a good definition of his work, as it threatens to result in the theme of “The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air” .With sterile synths, a rudimentary beat, silly breaks and Dowds dirty uncle -verzen.And so it sounds more as if he were in pieces like “3:29:48” (his birth) and “Modern Woman” hossen sitting around with an XL-beatbox and a bag full of crooked rhymes.

Elsewhere you can find nods towards rock and roll swagger, but only after it was thoroughly mangled.“Sexual Revolution” has more in common with The Butthole Surfers and Ween then the roots heroes in which he was once against.“Funkalicious” put Bootsy Collins by The Residents.Or again: “Last Laugh”, one for his mother, who initially almost sounds like 80’s INXS.En “Rhumba In The Park”, an outing direction of exotica that sounds like a response to “Worried Mind” from his early classic Pictures From Life’s Other Side.But it is still more foolish: during “Mr.Muggles “you expect it to Beverly Hills Cop -theme will emerge anytime and guest singer Anna Coogan may provide theatrical fringes while the raised title song is crazy barracks hubbub of the most dropout species.

It is clear that this screwball sails a course as disastrous as irresistible.Admit it: How many artists get away with to have their name chant?Years ago it happened already on stage, now in the final “World Without Me”.And yet you can not help but meegrijnzen with so much idiocy.“Whiskey Ate My Brain” is the elsewhere.It must then, but meanwhile gave it an incomparable oeuvre. Go, Johnny, go!

Dowd has 12 to October 30 on tour in Europe.He played three times in the Netherlands and once in Belgium: on October 29 in GC The Dairy (Zemst).

Since his debut in 1997 with the extremely quirky Wrong Side of Memphis Johnny Dowd builds steadily continue his highly personal musical universe.Attempts to push him into a musical box, are doomed to fail.Once his music was classified as alt country, but throughout the years he used more and more elements in his songs more closely linked to the world of Captain Beefheart than alt-country stars like Whiskeytown or Green on Red.Dowd is there actually a good habit not to be pinned down to one particular booth because he looks with the intention of pleasure, and even certain greedy, over the fence of other styles to mix the best elements in his music.Execute American Folklore, according to my count his twentieth album, takes these industrious do-it-yourselfer is also a hefty dose electronics at and in most cases this leads to results that best suit me.

Johnny Dowd also now takes the lion’s share of the instruments and vocals himself, but let the background vocals and in Brains-a-Flame also lead vocals on an at times fierce Anna Coogan who are about to hear supreme best feeling in the company of Dowd.This cross-fertilization leads to an album that is a far cry from the kind of music ends Dowd made at the beginning of his career.The first association I made when I open unease and Deviance and songs like Last Laugh and Freddie heard was, moreover, not Don Van Vliet, the Australian band Flash and the Pan.Perhaps this trend will cost him a few fans, but Dowd has kept awake located.The man goes his own way and will hopefully continue to do so far.He has the creativity and meanwhile the age.There now appear more than enough interchangeable plates.(Mother Jinx Records)

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